Take these frozen wings and learn to fly again, try to antifreeze.

It’s been an interesting few days. I’ve had limited internet access so there have been no updates to this blog.

We’ve been in Ireland visiting family. It was good to get away and see everybody. Unfortunately, the ludicrous weather hit Ireland as hard as it hit parts of England and our plans had to be changed to avoid becoming victims of travel chaos. As a result of the snow, my wife and son stayed behind in Ireland and will now return Saturday, whilst I decided to travel home yesterday on my own and get back to work, saving three days valuable holiday in the process.

Everything went OK yesterday. I got the 8.20 train from Kilkenny to Dublin and by the time I reached the Irish capital, there wasn’t any snow to be seen, not even at the sides of the road. Everything was looking good. I got to the airport at 10.45 ish which was about 5 hours too early but hey, I can fill my time.

I got on the flight and all was looking good. Not a bit of snow in sight. Five minutes later however and the snow was honking down, blizzard style. Visibility was down to a few yards at best I’d say. Nightmare. It was looking like we’d be denied and to be honest, I didn’t fancy the almighty scramble to try and book a seat on the following days flight. There were people on my flight who had been cancelled from the previous day and by all accounts, Ryanair had just punted them back into the terminal with no clear instruction as to what to do and no assistance.

The pilot came on the intercom and said that as soon as the wings were defrosted, we would be taking off. Ryanair are notoriously savage when it comes to cancelling flights and I could see them giving it another 20 minutes and then goodnight Vienna. Or Dublin.

Two hours we sat there. Two fucking hours. On a runway. Two hours before a bloke came along in a cherry picker and scooshed the wings down with anti-freeze. I wouldn’t have minded but the snow had stopped and the ice was melting by itself at this stage. Eventually we got home about two and a quarter hours late.

I shouldn’t complain. Some people had flights cancelled, delayed massively or diverted. I just wonder why, in a part of the world where winter is hardly a surprise, we should still struggle with such a simple thing as snow. The UK and Ireland collapsed under the weight of it whilst countries such as Russia and Canada don’t raise an eyebrow if it’s under a couple of feet deep.

We need to give them a shout and find out exactly what their secret is. I’ll bet my right bollock that it isn’t anything overly complicated.

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